C¥7 















The Indictment 




BY 

Hon. Daniel F. Cohalan 

Justice of the Supreme Court 
STATE OF NEW YORK 




JULY, 1919 

Published by the 

Friends of Irish Freedom 

280 BROADWAY NEW YORK 




^^^ 





FOREWORD 

By Hon. John Jerome Rooney, 
Former Chief Judge of the Court of Claims of New York State 

A word about the author of the following remarkable pamphlet. 
Without doubt the paper is one of the most powerful and unique polemics 
yet produced by Ireland's most recent struggle for independence. 

To the Irish race in America, and the friends of Ireland's cause, the 
author, Daniel Florence Cohalan, stands out as a strong national and 
international figure. Above all else, he is to them a 100 per cent Ameri- 
can, whose fight for Ireland's liberty grows directly out of his American 
character and principles. 

He is a native of the State of New York, born at Middletown. He 
is in the full vigor of middle age. Of the pure Celtic strain of the 
"fighting race," members of his family have been in every war for America 
from the Revolution on. 

He is a graduate of Manhattan College, of New York City. Admitted 
to the Bar in 1888, for many years he practiced law in N_ew York. He 
became interested in politics, and, over a course of years, wrote the 
State and City platforms of one of the great parties. In the year 1911 
he was appointed to the Supreme Court bench of the State of New York 
and, in the following election, he was elected to a full term of fourteen 
years. 

From the days of his youth he was interested In the cause of Ireland, 
and constantly worked and spoke in her behalf. He has visited Ireland 
many times; has a beautiful country place near Cork, and, oddly enough, 
knows England almost as well as he knows Ireland. He has been many 
times a visitor of both countries and is a close student of their histories. 

No man in this country is better acquainted with the strength and 
weakness of England, and no one is more familiar than he with the 
methods of conquest and exploitation by which the world-wide British 
Empire has been built up. 

He has made a complete study of the economic factors underlying 
the struggle between England and Ireland. This arsenal of knowledge, 
joined with a direct, simple, forceful style of speaking, makes him one 
of the most convincing and powerful speakers in the United States. His 
logic is inexorable. This quality, joined with great legal attainments, has 
given him a reputation as one of the soundest and most capable Judges 
of the Supreme Bench of the State of New York. 

Justice Cohalan is today the leader of the Irish race and the Irish 
cause in America. 

To him is chiefly due the rise and progress of the more recent great 
Irish movement in America. It was he who started the formation of the 
Friends of Irish Freedom, the national organization which today is to be 
found in every State of the Union. 

He presided over the great Irish Race Convention in Philadelphia, 
February last, to which over five thousand delegates were accredited. 
The resolutions at the Convention were presented by Cardinal Gibbons, 
of Baltimore, and were seconded by a Jewish Rabbi, an Episcopal Minister 
and a Presbyterian Minister. 

To Justice Cohalan the claim of Ireland admits of no compromise: 
The Irish Republic, established by the will of the vast majority of the 
Irish people, must be recognized. 

That solution, and that only, can satisfy the people of Ireland, and, 
therefore, the American friends of Ireland and of Liberty throughout the 
world, and contribute to the making of a just and permanent peace for 
all mankind. 

New York, July, 1919. 
Gift 









THE INDICTMENT 

By Hon. Daniel F. Cohalan, Justice Supreme Court, New York 

The grreat trouble with the mass of the people of America on the 
question of Ireland is their viewpoint thereon. Without intending to be 
unfair, they take for granted the justice of the English view. They find 
England — largely the mistress of the world and in many ways admitted to 
be the leader of modern civilization — in possession of Ireland. 

They find, according to histories mainly written by England's friends, 
that she has been thus in Ireland for centuries, and they take it for 
granted that she must be there legally; that she is there as a matter of 
right. They take for granted, too, that in the evolution of civilization, 
in the making of history, that conditions required her to be there, and 
that England's claim to the overlordship of Ireland is a valid and just 
claim. 

This view is strengthened by all the literature which most Americans 
ever read. The so-called English literature with which Americans come 
in contact usually rates England as the one great power which, through 
the centuries past, has been carrying aloft the torch of justice and prog- 
ress into the dark corners of the world. So, it is not to be wondered at 
that many Americans are prone to think of England as the guiding star 
of civilization, educating and lifting up down-trodden suffering peoples 
that have been tyrannized over by their national tyrants. 

This is the view of England that Englishmen like to have the world 
take of their country. Because of this viewpoint, it is extremely difficult 
to get before the American jury — fair as it intends to be — the actual facts 
of history, not to speak of the present-day conditions, as they exist in 
Ireland. 

The Dominating Figures in England 

The ordinary American, accustomed to giving almost all of his time 
to a study of internal conditions of his own country — so far as his 
interest leads him on — has not learned to differentiate between the Eng- 
land which is and the England that, according to her writers and poets, 
seems to be. 

He has not come to understand that the English democracy of which 
he hears and reads so much has little reality in fact in government, and 
that England still continues to be governed by a handful of men, represent- 
ing, with but few exceptions, the same small group of titled land-controll- 
ing families that have governed England since the days of Henry the 
Eighth, if not, in fact, much longer. Since the downfall of continental 
aristocracies this condition is true of England more than of any other 
country. 

The dominating figures in England today — those in actual pov,er — are 
the Cecils and their relations. Lloyd George or some other figure that 
has come to represent democracy or radicalism, if you will, in the eyes 
of the world, is put forward as the Premier of governing authority. But 
the will that dominates, controls and finally directs the policies and 
actions of England, is that of the master spirit Cecil, no matter which 
member of that family or its connections it may happen to be. 

In the last generation it was the Marquis of Salisbury, former Premier 
of England, the man who said, some forty years ago, that England and 
America were natural rivals in every court and in every port; the man 
who more than any other — with the exception of Joseph Chamberlain, the 
great radical who ratted and joined the forces of conservatismi — was 
responsible for the destruction of the two little Republics in South Africa. 

It was this same Salisbury who said, in the days when the Irish were 
carrying everything before them in the Parliamentary fights in the House 
of Commons, that the Irish were no better than the Hottentots and should 



receive the same treatment. It was the same man who represented 
England in the Congress of Berlin and of whom Bismarck said— because 
he quit when opposed by superior force — that he reminded him of a lath, 
painted to look like iron. 

Salisbury was aided and was succeeded by his nephew, Arthur James 
Balfour, who became Premier of England, first Lord of the Admiralty, 
and a number of other high-sounding things, but who has never been able 
to wipe out the title of "Bloody Balfour" conferred upon him by the 
people of Ireland when he was Chief Secretary and, among other acts, 
ordered the shooting, if necessary, by the troops, in cold blood, of the 
defenseless, unarmed people of Mitchelstown. 

Balfour is still to the fore and is probably the chief governing force 
in England today, except in so far as he is displaced by his cousin, Lord 
Robert Cecil, son of the Marquis of Salisbury and father of the proposed 
League of Nations — which would, if it became effective, undo the work 
of the Revolution and put us in the position of being again a vassal 
state of England, subject to the control of the Cecils or any other landed 
aristocracy that might, in the future, control the destinies of England 
and the world. 

These are types of the men who dominate England, and, through her, 
control the British Empire. The little King George V, first cousin to 
the late Emperor of the Germans and the Czar of the Russians, at present 
represents the German royal family as King of England and Emperor 
of India. 

He rules over every third person on earth and over almost every 
third square mile of land on earth. He is actually master of all the seas 
and is at the head of a government more powerful than any which ever 
before existed in all the history of mankind. 

Englishmen like to say that King George reigns but does not rule. 
That is true. The real ruling force is that handful of aristocrats who 
represent the landed feudal aristocracy of England and who form the 
most absolute, most arbitrary and most powerful autocracy the world has 
ever seen. 

England Makes Other Nations Supply the Soldiers 

The history of England differs from that of every other country. No 
other country before her has reached her dominant place among the 
Empires of the earth. Rome approached nearer to England than did any 
other country in similarity of methods by which she acquired world con- 
trol. Her Imperial motto, "Divide et Impera," marked the policy by 
which she subdued almost the entire world of her day and ruled the 
known world without a rival for centuries. 

But Rome acquired most of her power through her own soldiers. The 
generals who led her armies to victory were of Roman blood; the soldiers 
who swept everything before them on the field of battle were Roman 
legions, who found few who could stand before them. They risked their 
own lives, their own blood, for the quarrels of their country, in order that 
her will might be imposed upon other countries. 

England has improved on all this. She follows the Roman motto, 
but because she leaves the control of the policy of her government in the 
hands of her diplomats; other nations, other races, are made to supply 
the generals who win the battles, and the soldiers who bleed, in order 
that England may grow great. 

England's Policy Takes Advantage of Friend and Foe 

This policy which had its beginning under Henry the Eighth has been 
consistently carried forward, subordinating every other interest to that 
of the growth of England and the extension of her power. It has been 
carried on through the ages by every governrnent which came into 
power in England, no matter what its domestic policy may have been. 

Englishmen may differ upon domestic problems — upon questions of 
taxation, of education, of religion — but as against ail foreigners they are 
a unit and their policy is always consistently to take advantage of all 
openings given them throughout the world, to make and unmake alliances, 
to make and break treaties, to take advantage of friend and foe in order to 



add to the wealth and power of England and to break down those who 
have stood against her. 

One of the results of this policy is seen today in the proud boast of 
England that the sun never sets on the British Empire. Her flag flies 
in triumph over territory in every continent and in most of the important 
islands of the seas. It is carried aloft as the flag controlling the power 
on every sea of the world. 

Her forts guard practically all the great narrow waterways of the 
earth, with the exception of the Panama Canal; and there by reason of 
her extraordinary influence over American legislation, England has acquired 
for her commerce all the rights and privileges enjoyed by American com- 
merce, although the Panama Canal belongs to us, was built by America and 
paid for by America's treasures. 

Moulding Public Opinion of the World 

Another and if possible more important result of this policy of England 
is the extraordinary control she has gained over public opinion in every 
country in the world. Her soldiers have won battles for her on land, her 
admirals have won fights at sea, but these are as nothing when compared 
to the triumph of her diplomats. No group of men in the history of the 
world can compare in skill, in adroitness, in finesse, in influence, with the 
diplomats of England. 

The visible British Empire is an external monument of their triumph, 
but the invisible British Empire, with its control of influences in every 
government on earth, its thousand and one ways of making opinion through 
the press, the magazines, the pulpits, the schools, of every race and in 
every clime, is a vaster, more far-reaching monument of their finesse, their 
adroitness, their ability to make black seem white. 

The Romans were satisfied with their triumph at arms. When their 
soldiers had beaten down those of the opponent, the generals and princes 
of the vanquished were brought to Rome and make to walk sub jugo through 
the streets, chained to the wheels of the chariots of the Roman Consul. 

The English diplomat, more skilled in human nature, more subtle, 
more far-reaching in his plans, is not satisfied with such outward marks 
of triumph. He carries on a campaign throughout the world, to justify 
his actions, and, if possible, to ease his own conscience. As an example: 

England Attempts to Destroy the Soul of Ireland 

Even though England by brute force has been in possession of the 
body of Ireland for centuries, the English diplomat continues his fight 
to destroy the soul of Ireland. Even though he has proclaimed, at the 
birth of each succeeding generation, that he has again conquered Ireland, 
he still keeps looking in vain for a declaration from the people of Ireland 
that they have been conquered. 

He tells himself that he has beaten the Irish because of the thousand 
and one cruelties he has practiced upon them, but he knows in his heart 
that he cannot conquer the Irish people while one man and one woman 
of Irish blood survive. 

He knows — if the world does not know — that the people of Ireland 
want absolute independence. He has been able with a thousand subter- 
fuges to confuse the thought of the world on the question of what Ireland 
wants, but he cannot deceive himself. 

The Balfours and Cecils of this generation know, as well as Burleigh, 
their relative, in the days of the reign of Elizabeth knew, that what Ire- 
land wants is to have England get out of Ireland, bag and baggage, and 
leave the people of Ireland to govern their own country in their own way. 



Ireland Is United for Absolute Independence 

In the last analysis, the question between England and Ireland is 
simplicity itself. There are two nations, each of which wishes to rule, 
govern, own Ireland. One is the Irish nation, to whom Ireland belongs, 
for whom it was set apart by God Almighty Himself from all the rest 
of the world. 

The Irish people have dwelt in Ireland for thousands of years, distinct 



and separate in a hundred ways from all other peoples, set apart in nature, 
in thought, in language, in custom, from the rest of the world, marked by 
the hand of God with an individuality all their own. 

The Irish people have their own strength, their own virtues, their 
own gifts, their own weaknesses, but differ from and are different to any 
and all other races of men. The Irish people have absorbed all other 
strains of blood that have gone into the strange country of Ireland so 
as to have made strangers who have gone there, after a few generations, 
an integral part of themselves, or, as an old writer phrased it, "more Irish 
than the Irish themselves." 

The other nation that wishes to own, govern and rule Ireland is the 
English nation, belonging to England but foreign to Ireland. A nation 
of great gifts, great failings; a nation that may yet, in the Providence of 
God, reach the point where it can be made to see that it will be greater 
to conquer itself than to conquer a city or a world; greater to bring peace, 
contentment and opportunity for decent living, not to some portion of it- 
self but to all its people, so that it may not be said in the future, as it was 
said in the past, in a recent report of a British Commission that one- 
third of the people of England did not have a week between themselves 
and starvation. 

Ireland Only Wants What Belongs to Her 

If the question between Ireland and England were between two 
individuals, no jury sitting in any part of America would have any difficulty 
in disposing of the matter. Ireland does not ask anything of England ex- 
cept to be let alone. She wants only what belongs to her. She wants only 
that which was her own. She wants to govern herself and her own people 
in her own way, according to her own standards, and with absolute re- 
ligious freedom and political equality for all of her children. 

Ireland does not ask one inch of territory that is not contained within 
the four seas of Ireland. She does not ask to impose her will upon a 
single person who dwells beyond her shores. She appeals to the free 
peoples of the earth for the opportunity to go her own way, in peace and 
harmony with all the rest of mankind. She offers not alone to forgive, 
but so far as she can, even to forget past dealings with England and to 
dwell in peace and amity and concord with England as a neighbor. 

But she refuses, as she has refused for seven hundred and fifty years, 
to permit the stranger — England — to govern her, to control her resources, 
to shut her off from contact with the other nations of the earth, to keep 
her out of her high place among the nations. She says, with the voice 
of a united people — not in a quarrelsome way, but in the quiet voice of 
reasoned judgment — that as she has fought for seven hundred and fifty 
years for her independence, so she is prepared to fight, if necessary, as 
long again in order to attain that independence, and to resume her place 
among the independent nations. 

Her sons say for her, quite calmly, with knowledge of the fact that 
though scattered all over the world, they yet remain a great race, that 
England with all her power, with all her subtlety, with all her barbarity, 
cannot destroy them or wipe them out; that the fight which England 
waged through so many centuries can end only when England shall with- 
draw her last soldier from Ireland and leave that country, which she has 
been robbing for centuries, to govern and rule herself. 

The diplomat of England has succeeded in many parts of the world 
as has no other diplomat in the history of mankind, but he has failed in 
Ireland as absolutely and completely as any diplomat has failed in other 
parts of the world. 

It may be said without exaggeration that England has tried for cen- 
turies every form of tyranny, of cruelty, of inhumanity in her treatment 
of the people of Ireland. Her chief spokesman, Lloyd George, admitted 
in the House of Commons last year (1918) that England had made an absolute 
failure of her government of Ireland, and that today she was as unpopular 
with the mass of the people of Ireland as she was in the days of Oliver 
Cromwell. 

Belgian Atrocities Duplicated a Hundred-Fold in Ireland 

In the early stages of the late great war, the world was made familiar 

6 



with the story of the treatment the Belgians received in their own country 
at the hands of the invaders. It was but the recital and summary of 
England's treatment of Ireland. Not an atrocity was charged against the 
Germans in Belgium, not a cruelty practiced, not a crime committed, which 
could not be duplicated one hundred-fold in England's treatment of Ireland. 

Proof of this fact need only be taken from the admissions of English 
historians; from the declarations of English statesmen — the only differ- 
ence between Belgium and Ireland being that the atrocities in Belgium 
extended over a period of three or four years, while the atrocities of Eng- 
land in Ireland have extended over the centuries. 

Belgium today, with a chorus of thanksgiving from all over the world, 
has resumed her place among the free nations of the earth and is to be 
indemnified in so far as money can indemnify a suffering country for 
losses sustained. 

Ireland today, after seven and a half centuries of greater suffering 
still lies prostrate at the feet of England, while English statesmen, with 
a smug hypocrisy all their own, dilate with well simulated astonishment 
on the dreadful fact that England cannot leave Ireland to be governed by 
Irishmen, because, forsooth, the Irish cannot agree politically among them- 
selves. 

No Such Political Unanimity Exists Elsewhere in the World 

The fact is, however, that there is in Ireland today a degree of political 
unanimity greater than exists in any other country on earth — very much 
greater than that which exists in England, where Lloyd George and his 
confreres are kept in power through a political coalition between eight 
different groups and much greater than exists in our own country. 

Ireland is the only country in the world in which a plebescite has 
been taken since the armistice was declared last November (1918). The result 
of that plebescite was that the people of Ireland, by a vote of more than 
three to one, declared in favor of absolute separation from England, and 
in favor of the establishment of an Irish Republic. 

This was on the fourteenth of last December. On the twenty-first 
day of January of this year, the elected representatives of the people of 
Ireland met in convention at the Mansion House in the City of Dublin, 
declared the existence of the Irish Republic, and made an appeal to the 
free peoples of the earth for its international recognition. 

In furtherance of that appeal, Eamon de Valera, President of the 
Irish Republic, and several members of the Dail Eireann (Irish Congress) 
are now in this country. They seek to lay before the people of America 
actual conditions as they exist in Ireland today. They ask a hearing in 
order that America may understand that what the people of Ireland are 
asking, is full recognition of their status as a free and independent 
people. 

The Irish people seek not some redress of grievances, large or small, 
but they demand that England take her grip off Ireland and leave the 
country to be governed by its own people, in its own way. The opinion 
of America has been aroused within the last year, as it never has been 
before, in favor of Ireland. 

England Aims to Confuse the Issue 

But the English diplomats with their accustomed skill are seeking 
to confuse the issue, to prevent our people from getting a clear under- 
standing of what is at stake between Ireland and England. 

It is their task, their duty at this time, not to simplify but to com- 
plicate the issue; not to clarify, but to confuse the situation. Because of 
that, there appear in a hundred forms, a hundred suggestions from England, 
as to a way out of the difficulty. 

One group talks of Dominion Home Rule, while others talk of a 
dozen varieties of the same form. Carson talks of having conditions 
remain as they are, while Smuts — the "slim" South African who believes 
all peoples should continue to be swallowed up by the British Empire — 
comes forward with that latest suggestion that Ireland should receive the 
same recognition as that given to Bohemia. 

But all ask for Ireland something which England wants — none offers 
to Ireland that which Ireland demands; because at bottom — let them 



explain as they may — in any one of the hundred devious devices English 
statesmen and historians have used in attempting to explain it — the fact 
is that England remains in Ireland for England's profit, security and 
power, and does not intend to get out of Ireland until she is persuaded 
either by force, or by the prospect of greater profit in some other form, 
that it is to her interest to do so. 

England says she remains in Ireland only for two reasons: First, 
because Irishmen cannot agree politically, and second, because Ireland 
cannot financially stand alone. Neither statement has the slightest founda- 
tion in fact. 

Plebescite Taken in December Refutes First Claim 

The plebescite taken in Ireland last December, under the most adverse 
conditions, shows that the people of Ireland have reached a degree of 
political unanimity practically without parallel. With the great English 
army of occupation and with all the machinery of the government in 
possession of the English garrison, the people of Ireland, by a vote of 
more than three to one, decided in favor of total separation of Ireland from 
England. 

According to the standard American histories, Washington and his 
associates were never able to rally to their support more than a majority 
of the colonists, if, in truth, they ever had so large a proportion of the 
colonists on their side. 

Even in the so-called convention presided over by Sir Horace 
Plunkett and hand picked by Lloyd George, there was a majority of 
40 to 29 in favor of the proposed plan then given, which would have gone 
beyond the scheme of miscalled settlement now proposed by many respon- 
sible spokesmen for England. This is the more remarkable when it is 
considered that a large number of the members of that body were selected 
by Lloyd George and his associates for the express purpose of having 
them fail to agree to any settlement. 

If the situation were not one of so much importance, it would be 
farcical to hear Lloyd George talk about the failure of the Irish to agree, 
when he himself remains in power in England, through a coalition made 
up of eight different groups, and was the direct cause of the so-called' 
failure to which he refers. 



England Remains in Ireland for Her Own Financial Gain 

England dares to say that she remains in Ireland, because Ireland 
cannot financially stand alone. This, in spite of the fact that last year 
England made at least $225,000,000 from her control of Ireland. She 
collected from Ireland and on Irish goods, during the preceding year, a 
revenue of more than 34,000,000 pounds. She spent on what she is pleased 
to call the "government" of Ireland, about 13,000,000 pounds, leaving a 
profit to herself of 21,000.000 pounds, an equivalent of about $105,000,000' 
profit gathered to herself through taxation of Ireland. 

Ireland did with the rest of the world the previous year a business 
of $820,000,000, according to Sir Horace Plunkett, though other spokes- 
men for England say this estimate is entirely too low. Of the foreign 
business done by Ireland, more than 95% was done with England. Why? 
Because England has so completely cut Ireland off from the rest of the 
world that she is unable to send goods abroad except through England, 
or to buy abroad except through England, thus being compelled, against 
all economic law, to sell in the cheapest market and to buy in the dearest 
market. 

It is only fair to presume, as a result of this, that the English trades- 
man, who is as shrewd, as adroit, as far-seeing in his own field as is the 
English diplomat in the field of government, made a profit of at least 
15% on the turn-over of this business with Ireland. 

Ireland thus gave to England, in additions to the taxation, a profit 
of $120,000,000, thus making for England in a single year a profit of vast 
proportions — a profit of $225,000,000 from her control of Ireland. That 
sum represents two hundred and twenty-five million reasons why England 
wishes to remain in Ireland. She is there as a matter of profit. She is- 

8 



there as a matter of interest. But, above all other reasons, strong and 
selfish as they are, England remains in Ireland because she regards her 
continued control of Ireland as vital and essential to her continued control 
of the seas. 

England's world dominance depends upon her control of the seas, 
and as Ireland stands between her and the ocean, she must control 
Ireland in order to reach the seas and this is the reason above all why- 
she insists upon Ireland in subjection. In the last analysis, it is the naked 
rule of might. 

England Uses Ireland for a Great Dairy Farm 

Much has been made by the spokesmen of England of the claim that 
Ireland must remain attached to England because England is the chief 
market for Irish goods, and the country through which Ireland's com- 
merce with the world must be carried on, if Ireland is to seek a world 
market. 

No more damning indictment could be brought against England than 
is brought by this bit of English propaganda. The simple outstanding 
fact is that England does not buy one dollar's worth of goods from 
Ireland which she could buy cheaper in any other part of the world. 
Further, because of her absolute control of the seas of the world, and of 
her economic contact with ever}' other country on earth, England does 
not sell to Ireland one single article, no matter how insignificant, for which 
she could find a better price in any other part of the globe. 

England uses Ireland for a great dairy farm, a broad grazing land, 
in order that food may be provided at the lowest possible price, for the 
teeming millions in the industrial centers of England. She uses Ireland 
as a dumping ground for the excess products of her factories — excess 
products which are turned out by her manufacturers either to meet special 
competition in some other country, or in order to keep her industrial workers 
employed so that they may not have time to think too much about the 
grievances and the industrial problems that lead to revolution. 

England Destroyed the Population of Ireland 

The world recently rang with English propaganda in the form of 
stories of the tyrannies of the Czar of the Russians and of the governments 
of the Central Empires. These empires have gone, and properly gone, 
the ways of every other tyrant of past history, but the fact remains that 
at their worst, these powers did not keep the population of Alsace-Lorraine, 
of Schleswig-Holstein, of Galicia, from greatly increasing in numbers and 
in prosperity. 

Nor did the brutalities and outrageous excesses of power of the suc- 
cessive Czars of the Russias prevent Russian Poland from growing greatly 
in population and in wealth. Yet in the seventy years from 1845 to 1915, 
the population of Ireland, under what English spokesmen are pleased to 
call the benign reigns of Victoria, of Edward VII and of George V, has 
decreased from more than eight and one-quarter millions to 4,390,219. 

Government-Made Famines to Destroy the People of Ireland 

In that time, in spite of the cruelties and misgovernment practiced 
upon the people of those continental countries, no charge has been made 
and proved — as in the case of Ireland — of a government-made famine 
in which more than one million people starved to death in a land of 
plenty and another two millions were sent across the seas to seek in 
foreign countries an opportunity to live — an opportunity of which they 
were deprived in their own land by reason of the inhumanity of an alien 
government. 

England has systematically broken down every effort made to build 
up the industries, to develop the resources of Ireland, while her spokes- 
men sing in chorus that all the wrongs of Ireland are ancient wrongs 
and that Ireland is today governed by the same laws that govern Eng- 
land and therefore the Irish people should be contented with their lot 
and cease to cry for liberty. 

These assertions do not bear the slightest investigation of an impar- 
tial mind. Ireland has been turned into a grazing country by the laws 



of England and by acts of the English government. The system of laws 
made for a highly complex industrial state like England are utterly out 
of place in a country whose main pursuit is made to be agriculture. 

Great Harbors of Ireland in Idleness 

The shipping controlled by England cuts Ireland oft from all contact 
with the rest of the world and keeps in idleness twenty of the greatest 
harbors of Europe. It prevents the modern development of the ports of 
Cork, Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Dublin, ports which centuries ago were 
great trading ports, carrying on extensive commerce with the countries 
of continental Europe. 

The railroads of the smaller and poorer country are controlled by 
the railroads of the richer and larger country, so that it cost until recently 
as much to send a barrel of flour across from Galway to Dublin as it did 
to send it from Chicago to Liverpool. 

Most of the banks of Ireland are bought up or controlled by the banks 
of England, with the result that the deposits are not invested in Ireland 
for the development of its resources or the upbuilding of its industries, 
but are placed at the disposal of English manufacturers and business men, 
to aid in their schemes for exploiting the rest of the world and beating 
down the industrial rivals of England in Europe and in the United States 
of America. 

The Irish Mercantile Marine, which for centuries carried on a com- 
merce with continental Europe and America, has been wiped out of 
existence by adverse English laws. It has been replaced only by ships 
which bring Ireland's goods to England and England's goods to Ireland, 
in such a manner as to make the Irish market, to all intents and purposes, 
the private monopoly of England. 

England, roughly speaking, is one and one-half times the size of 
Ireland, in square miles. When the Act of Union was laid upon Ireland, 
January 1, 1801, the population of Ireland was almost six million and 
the population of England was less than nine million. Today, the popu- 
lation of England is over thirty-six millions, and the population of Ireland, 
according to the latest English census, is 4,390,219. At the same date 
which marks the application of the Act of Union to Ireland, the population 
of Scotland was 1,700,000, while today, for the first time in history, it is 
larger than the population of Ireland. 

Ireland Viciously Misrepresented Abroad 

If Ireland had been satisfied to become the contented province of Eng- 
land and to abandon her fight for liberty and her desire for independence; 
if she would consent to become absorbed into England, to become a part of 
the English people, she would undoubtedly enjoy a prosperity that would 
mean all that the word implies. 

It is because of the fact that she will not consent to such an arrange- 
ment, it is because she regards the ideal as of more consequence, even in 
this life, than she does the material, that Ireland must continue to be 
misrepresented abroad. If England has her way, her rule will continue 
in Ireland until the day and that generation when the British Empire, 
following all the other mighty empires of the past, shall hear the hour 
of her doom strike and shall be compelled to give way to the onward 
march of events which will carry its end into the mighty empire and 
bring freedom to the peoples all over the earth who are oppressed by it. 
Thoughtful observers the world over agree that that day is not far 
distant. 

England has time after time overrun Ireland with her armies, with 
her confiscators, but she has never conquered Ireland and unless all 
signs by which the future may be gauged fail, she never can conquer 
Ireland. 

Today, England faces an Irish race scattered all over the world, totaling 
thirty millions of people. She may boast that the sun never sets on the 
British Empire, but she must also admit that it never sets on the man 
of Irish blood. Wherever he has gone, into whatever country he maj' 
have been absorbed, he remains instinctivelj' hostile to the British govern- 
ment and the things for which that government stands. 

10 



He was, as American historians tell us, the first to raise the banner 
of revolt against England in this country. According to that scholarly 
volume, "A Hidden Phase of American History," by Michael J. O'Brien, 
38% of the rank and file of Washington's Army w^ere Irishmen or sons 
of Irishmen — the most determined, the most unfaltering enemy England 
had in America. 

He harbors no enmity against the English people. He pities rather 
than condemns them for the injustice under w^hich they suffer. He 
understands the economic slavery which is imposed upon them — but he 
is the untiring, the unfaltering enemy of the conscienceless chicanery 
and corrupting materialism which are the chief weapons of English 
diplomacy. 

America Was Led Into the War to Put an End to Autocracy 

England may control statesmen, she may thunder from the pulpits 
and she may speak through the impersonal editorials of the press in 
various countries. She may purchase poets, she may hire apologists,^ she 
may rewrite school histories, but ever and always there will be men rising 
up throughout the world to thwart her schemes, to prevent the consum- 
mation of her carefully laid plans, to point out the facts of history and 
to arouse the liberty-loving people of the world to a realization of the 
fact that there can be no freedom on earth until the autocracy which hides 
behind the mask of navalism is as completely broken as was that which 
was covered by the garb of militarism. 

England may succeed — as she has succeeded — in cajoling or out- 
maneuvering the spokesmen of free peoples at the Conference of Versailles; 
she may write the terms of peace there as she wrote them at Vienna a 
century before — but she cannot stifle the conscience of the world. She 
cannot satisfy America with the assertion that the war has been won 
because German and Russian militarism has been broken. 

America was led into the war to put an end to autocracy, and that 
means autocracy in every form. America entered the war to break down 
special privileges in all governments and to see that not only militarism, 
but its twin sister, navalism, was broken beyond repair. 

If America had not gone into the war it would have ended in an 
entirely different way. We threw our strength, our youth, our vigor, our 
idealism into the scales and we freely expressed our belief that when we 
won — for there was no "if" about it, once we went into the war — there 
would be an end to autocracy. 

We declared there would be self-determination for all peoples; that 
there would be freedom of the seas — that freedom for which America 
through all her history has contended and for which she waged one 
victorious war. 

America won the war. Sir Douglas Haig's comments to the contrary 
notwithstanding. America threw her soul, her honor, her ideals into the 
winning of the war, and America will not now be satisfied until all the 
peoples of the earth gather in the fruits of that victory. 

There can be no just or permanent peace if, after destroying one 
form of autocracy, we leave another form more strongly entrenched than 
ever and resting upon a firmer foundation. The plain people throughout 
the world will not rest while two great empires remain, their strength 
buttressed and fortified by a peace which able spokesmen of these empires, 
with superior courage, superior diplomacy, with greater skill, impose upon 
mankind. 

America magnificently won the war. America has failed to make the 
peace. America's spokesmen laid down splendidly the terms of peace 
which were to satisfy the world and which were agreed to in advance 
by the spokesmen of England, of France, of Italy. But America's spokes- 
men have been outplayed, outclassed, by the veteran diplomats of the 
latter countries. 

America was satisfied with the proposed terms of peace. She is 
utterly dissatisfied with the proposed Peace Treaty and its accompanying 
League of Nations as drawn by Cecil and Smuts and now urged by the 
President of the United States as something behind which he may hide 

11 



the discomfiture resulting from his encounter with the skilled diplomats 
of the old world. 

Gloss over the story as one may, the fact remains that out of the 
Conference at Versailles there have emerged two great powers greatly 
strengthened, the Island Empires of England and Japan. These two 
empires are now seizing and taking to themselves the choicest spots on 
earth, adding tremendously to their already swollen power. 

The War, Fought for Democracy, Enthrones Autocracy 

England, whose spokesmen assured us one hundred times during 
the war that she sought no territory, has had, in her own accustorned 
style, forced upon her "unwilling" shoulders huge strips of land which 
nominally belonged to the German Empire but which really belonged 
to their inhabitants. These people, as the result of the war, are simply 
transferred from one group of exploiters to another and a more expe- 
rienced group. 

Forty million Chinese Republicans were torn from their own country 
with the immense province of Shantung and turned over to the Empire 
of Japan, thus making it larger, in point of population, than the United 
States of America. 

England, which, before we entered the war, on the visit of Balfour 
to Washington, was in the throes of despair and on the verge of defeat, 
can now promptly proclaim through her mouthpiece. Lord Cecil, that she 
emerges from the war richer and stronger, actually and relatively, than 
any other country on earth. 

The war, fought for Democracy, may end with a peace which greatly 
increases the pov/er of Autocracy. The war, fought to bring freedomi 
of the seas, ends with England in unquestioned control of all the oceans 
of the earth. The war, fought to bring self-determination to all the 
peoples of the earth, has the doctrine of English pre-determination applied 
to some parts of the continent, in order temporarily to break up and 
permanently to cripple her European rivals. This doctrine is applied to 
Asia in such a way that the Japanese pre-determination may apply to the 
continent of Asia to the end that she may eventually absorb China and 
be ready with her intimate ally and close friend, England, for any emergency 
that may arise in any part of the world. 

The Two Great Empires Insist That America Guarantee Their Possessions 

Not satisfied with their own power to retain that which the self- 
satisfied and temporary spokesman for America has permitted them ta 
absorb, England and Japan are insisting through Clause X in the pro- 
posed League of Nations that America shall guarantee for all time the 
present territorial integrity of the two remaining empires on earth. 

One little knows the fierce passion for democracy which burns in 
the breast of the average American if he thinks that such a scheme will 
ever succeed. For one hundred and forty-three years America has been 
fighting with ever increasing vigor the battle of democracy. 

America has ever been to the forefront in the struggle for human 
rights. She has sought to put an end in every way to the special privi- 
leges of the few. She favors the rights of the many and she will not 
now permit any man speaking for her to reverse her position, to destroy 
her old ideals, or to prevent her from carrying on the struggle until 
democracy shall finally triumph and the last stronghold of autocracy 
be destroyed. 

Shantung a Monstrous Act 

The transfer of Shantung with its forty millions of people from the 
great young democracy of China to the absolutist Empire of Japan is. 
a monstrous act, indefensible, high-handed, un-American. The attempt 
to have us guarantee the territorial integrity of England and Japan is a 
monstrous and a cowardly act, an attempt not alone to truckle to the 
strong but to trample upon and destroy the rights of the weak. It would 
make us a party to every act of tyranny that hereafter was perpetrated 
throughout the world. 

But historj' shows that even if it were possible for the great Senate 
of the United States to be false and recreant to its trust, a thing like 

12 



this could not be permanently done. It is asking us to do the impossible. 
All history teaches, all experience shows, that nothing is static in nature, 
that it is impossible for one generation to so impose its will on the world 
as to prevent a change in the boundaries of countries or in the fortunes 
of nations. 

The League of Nations and the Holy Alliance 

A century ago a "Holy Alliance" undertook to do the very thing that 
is again being attempted today, but not only is the "Holy Alliance" 
referred to nowadays by words of contempt and contumely, but the very 
governments which brought the treaty into existence are themselves but 
memories. 

The old or little men who, for the moment, from time to time control 
the destinies of mankind may think themselves able to stop the progress 
of mankind and impose their wills upon advancing generations. But 
history shows that even the few great outstanding figures in the history 
of the centuries were not able thus to act for the future. And the last 
half-century, with its seven great empires thrown into the discard, shows 
how Fate laughs at the puny efforts of man to govern the future or control 
its destinies. 

The world is just entering upon a great era of growth and recon- 
struction, yet this is the time when an old man, an older man and a very 
old man in whose hands Fate seemed for the moment to have whimsically 
placed the strings of the future, chose to abandon the high-sounding battle 
cries upon which the war was waged and won, and to make another 
ill-conceived and badly executed balance of power under the name of the 
League of Nations. 

To do this, Clemenceau has tried to turn the wheels of time backward, 
tried to go back to the Europe of Louis XIV, breaking down the great 
peoples of the continent who outnumber and outbreed the French, and 
to set up, all over the continent, a series of buffer states that would 
prevent the growth of strong rivals to France, and leave her in the position 
of being the dominant military power of the continent. 

England, running true to form, is entirely contented, for the moment, 
to have France resume her old place, among the nations, so long as she 
may see her economic rivals on the continent broken into bits and reduced 
to the position of impotence and poverty. 

England herself, true to her predatory instincts, seizes in the name 
of civilization and justice, territories almost continental in area, rich in 
mineral and other natural resources, to be added to her already immense 
empire. She emerges from the war not only the greatest empire in extent 
that the world has ever known, with a monopolistic control of articles 
essential to the comforts and conveniences of mankind, but, through her 
unquestioned control of the seas, she will strive for a practical monopoly 
of the commerce of the world. 

England emerges from the war with but one economic or industrial 
rival upon earth, these United States of America, whose public opinion 
she flatters herself that she controls and whole activities she at least has 
been able to guide so far as to make us forgive, if we did not forget, our 
previous experience with her. 



England Seeks to Flatter America 

Tossing everything into the scales in the last great contest in which 
she broke, at least for generations to come, the continental industrial 
rivals which were ousting her from the markets of the world, England 
has won decisively and absolutely, as far as empire is concerned, and 
now looks with complacency upon the task before her of cajoling and 
flattering America. 

Meanwhile she carries on an economic war against us which will shut 
us out from the markets of the world, and which will gradually put us 
on the defensive in the fight that England is waging to recover the financial 
supremacy of the world, which she fondly believes we have but momen- 
tarily taken from her. 

■i5 



One plea that she has made calls attention to her tremendous sacrifices 
in the contest which she keeps reminding us was fought for our safety 
as well as for her own interests, and which many of her spokesmen, like 
Sir Douglas Haig, now remind us, since she is no longer in danger, was 
won by her and not by us. 

England is shutting out the products of our manufacturers from her 
territories and so far as possible is shutting out our commerce in every 
corner of the globe and is depending upon her control of the seas to 
eventually shut us out from most of the foreign markets and leave us 
in the position where our manufacturers must be content to sell their 
products in so much of our own markets as England may choose to 
leave to us. 

This is in no sense an exaggeration of what she seeks and of what 
she hopes. She relies upon the skill of her diplomats to bring this state 
of affairs about. She has very largely monopolized rubber, wool and 
other essential products of the world. She is seeking every day, with 
ever increasing chance of success, to monopolize the oil fields of the 
world, while all the time, with sophisticated casuistry, she keeps, through 
a chorus of a thousand voices raised in the press, the pulpits and the 
schools of America, assuring us that she alone in all the world is our 
constant friend, that but for her and her chivalrous, unselfish efforts we 
would have been overrun by some of the continental powers which were 
seeking this very world power which she now possesses to the full. 

She would have us believe that she fought unselfishly in the war 
for the very purposes for which our President says we entered the war, 
yet her first act after the war was won by us was to say that the doctrine 
of the freedom of the seas could not be even considered at Paris, and 
utterly unconsidered it was and still remains. 

She said she favored self-determination for all oppressed peoples 
and agreed with the President when he said that no people must live 
under a government not chosen by themselves. She must cynically smile 
to herself when she has the Peace Conference practically adjourn after 
having, with the help of that self-determination cloak, broken her rivals 
into pieces without any effort having been made to apply that doctrine 
to Ireland, to Egypt, to India, or to any of the other countries of which 
she is in possession with only the title that a robber has to his prey. 

Attempts to Make Over the Map of the World in the Dark 

She said she favored open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, and 
yet the "Holy Alliance" did not attempt to make over the map of the 
world with the same secrecy behind which these three gentlemen hid 
themselves at Paris. And so one might go through all of the points and 
find that English skill had escaped or English cynicism had flouted the 
warcries used in arousing mankind to save England, but which were in 
the way when an English peace had to be made. 

The Englishman has a genius for diplomacy. Not content with being 
saved from destruction, not content with unprecedented gains in terri- 
tory, in wealth, in prestige throughout the world, he now seeks to undo 
what he regards as mistakes of the past and to recover by mental ability 
that which he lost a century and a half ago by force of arms. In his 
self-satisfaction, he takes no account of the fact that the thirteen colo- 
nies, if they had continued as colonies, could not have begun to save 
him as the forty-eight states did actually save him, as he himself must 
admit. 

England Aims to Undo the Work of the Revolution 

He wishes, now that his peril is for the moment past, to undo the 
work of the Revolution, to destroy the great experiment in government 
which the fathers set up upon these shores, and by one stroke set back 
the hands on the clock of time for centuries. He wishes to do this, in 
order that the special forms of privileged autocracy which governs England 
may regain control of this country, and with its mighty strength and 
unlimited resources bring about that junction of the English-speaking races 
which his agents like Carnegie and Rhodes have foretold and for which 
they have labored for two generations. 

14 



He has hoped, because of his easy control of things at Paris, that he 
would find that the dead hand of Rhodes had actually won the victory. 
But he was astounded to find not alone the Senate of the United States 
standing like adamant against the proposed League of Nations, but the 
public sentiment of the people of America aroused as never before, not 
onlj' to defend American rights, but to do what he complains of as an 
insolent thing — to interfere in "domestic" problems of English politics. 

Washington Still the Seat of the American Government 

He is horrified to find that in spite of huge expenditures, that in spite 
of the British propaganda of NorthcliflFe, Parker and others of that ilk, 
America refuses to be made again into a colony, and that interest in the 
freedom of the seas has been aroused in America as never before. 

He has been brought to believe during the pressure of the war that 
American public opinion was only the echo of English public opinion, and 
is astounded now to find that his complete victory at Paris is likely to be 
turned into complete defeat at Washington, where, in spite of his hopes 
to the contrary, and to his utter consternation, he finds the real seat of 
American government still continues to be found. 

The Real Strength of England 

England, while hastening to assure us in a hundred ways that she had 
no selfish interest to serve in asking to have the League of Nations made 
operative and the integrity of the British Empire guaranteed by the power 
and resources of the United States, has unwittingly shown her own weak- 
ness. More and more thoughtful observers throughout the world are able 
to read in that demand the real opinion of English statesmen as to their 
own strength. 

As a flash of lightning in a storm enables the observer in a second 
to see his way through the darkness, so the request for such guarantee 
by Lord Cecil has revealed the real weakness of England, instead of the 
apparent strength which he and his group have been teaching us to 
observe. 

It is at once made clear that the England which must call on the 
world to guarantee its possessions is in a bad way both at home and 
abroad. It is an admission that it can no longer hope to call upon the 
strength of other countries in its hour of peril in order to preserve it, as 
it called the world into arms against France under Napoleon and against 
Germany under Wilhelm. 

In spite of its censorship, the rumblings of industrial labor troubles 
R'ith miners and transport workers and railway men are being heard in 
the land. The uprisings in India and Egypt, the dissatisfaction in Australia 
and in Canada, and, above all, the settled determination upon the part of 
the people of Ireland to take at their face value the promises of Wilson, 
Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Orlando, and to insist upon absolute self- 
determination, are matters which are calling the attention of mankind to 
the fact that there is and there can be no freedom on earth while this dis- 
tended and gigantic appetite called the British Empire continues to threaten 
and to prey upon mankind. 

America Is at the Parting of the Ways 

The parting of the ways has come for America. Either we remain 
true to our ideals, true to the traditions of the past, still the moral leader 
of mankind and the hope of the oppressed people of the earth, or we 
join with the privileged class of England and become one of the predatory 
powers of the world. 

Either we continue to lead the forces of Republicanism, whether they 
oppose the Central Empires of the continent, the Czars of the Russias; 
whether they stand against the Cecils and Balfours of England or 
the Mikado of Japan, and bring hope and cheer to the downtrodden peo- 
ple of Ireland, and we stand for the preservation of American rights or 
we join forces with Lloyd George, that artful dodger of English politics, 
in his efforts to further deceive the people and put off until another 
generation the settlement of the question of Ireland. The question of 

15 



Ireland, it must be remembered, can only be settled right when Ireland 
regains her independence and takes her place once more among the nations 
of the earth. 

Like everything else human, America cannot remain static. America 
must either advance or retire. It must continue to lead the forces of 
democracy in their onward march to absolute freedom, or it must join the 
forces of autocracy and seek to snatch liberty from the other nations of 
the world. 



America Is Asked to Enter Into an Entangling Alliance 

We are asked now to abandon the advice given us by our first — and 
one of our greatest Presidents — against entering into entangling alliances 
with other powers. Not alone should we refuse to abandon this advice, 
but we should more than ever make clear to the world our unfaltering 
determination to abide by it and to make it one of the fundamental planks 
in our foreign policy. By standing by it in the past we have grown 
great and prosperous, masters of our own destinies, arbiters of our own 
fate. 

We have been free to enter wars and free to remain at peace, accord- 
ing to the exigencies of the hour and according to what we conceived to 
be our own interest and the best policy for the protection of the liberties 
of mankind. We have been free to govern our actions by the best light 
and information which we could obtain upon questions at the hour of 
action. 

Our liberty of action has not been foreclosed bj-^ reason of any com- 
mitment made in advance by those who had passed off the stage of action 
or were no longer in a position to speak for the majority of the people 
of our country. In other words, we have always been in the position of 
being governed by the living will of" the present, rather than by the dead 
hand of the past. 

Not alone every mandate of interest, but the high call of idealism 
should counsel us to remain in that position and not commit ourselves 
to any alliance which, obeying the passion and meeting the whim of the 
hour, could commit those who come after us to labors and sacrifices which 
they should not be asked to undertake except at their own free will and 
upon good cause shown to them at the hour of sacrifice. 

We are asked now to be satisfied with a declaration of the Monroe 
doctrine, which according to many thoughtful observers, weakens and 
jeopardizes rather than strengthens that cardinal principle of American 
diplomacy. In this hour when a peace conference, called into existence 
for the purpose of making peace, did not content itself with settling the 
questions at issue between the belligerents, but went up and down the 
world seeking problems it might settle, we should extend and strengthen, 
rather than weaken, the doctrine laid down by James Monroe. 

We should insist that the western hemisphere be not invaded by any 
power from the east; that no old-world possessions held here are to be 
increased, and we should also insist upon the absolute withdrawal from 
this territory of the flag of everj' empire or monarchy. 

The British Flag Should Be Compelled to Follow the Other Flags from 

Our Shores 

What is sacrosanct about the British Empire that it continues to rule 
vast sections of the American continent after all other empires have left 
its shores? The flags of Russia, of Spain, of Portgual, of Denmark have 
been withdrawn from this hemisphere. Why should we not now insist 
that the flag of England should follow the others and leave here in this 
hemisphere, dedicated for all time to liberty and republicanism, only the 
flags of the free? 

Why should not our great neighbor on the north, which Cecil un- 
doubtedly hopes some day to use as a weapon to smite us, should the 
economic war now being waged between the countries ever reach the 
acute stage of military or naval warfare, or if there ever should come a 
conflict between England's ally, Japan, and ourselves — why should not 
that g^reat country have an opportunity of taking its place among the 

16 



republics of the earth, or even, if it chooses, of joining our country and 
thus bridging the gulf which separates us from our great territory of 
Alaska. 

The ties which bind the people of Canada to us are every day increas- 
ing in number and in strength. The ties of trade which bind us are 
natural and are varied in form. The Great Lakes that lie between us 
are not intended to separate us, but should, by a thousand ties of com- 
merce, draw us more closely together. Great numbers of our people come 
from the same racial stocks and in the late war, according to reports com- 
ing from ever increasing sources through our returned soldiers, our soldiers 
found a dozen ways in which they resembled one another for every way in 
which either found that they resembled the British soldiers. 

Chamberlain Has Said That an Adjoining Republic Is a Menace 

Thoughtful observers in the United States as well as in Canada realize 
that our interests are in the western rather than in the eastern hemisphere, 
and that the views of an ever-increasing number of Canadians with rela- 
tion to the future of Ireland, the future of Shantung, are those of a majority 
of the people of America rather than those of the governing body of 
England. 

The people of Canada are essentially a freedom-loving people, aside 
from what is pleased to call itself the governing class, which seeks for 
special privileges like the same class in England. Canadians desire lib- 
erty for themselves and would like to see the blessings of liberty given 
to every people. 

More than that, if there be anything in the repeated declarations of 
Joseph Chamberlain in his attempts to justify the rubbing out of the 
two little republics of South Africa that republican institutions adjoin- 
ing British territory were a menace to Britain, the governing class in 
England can look upon the continued existence of the American republic 
only as a menace to England and we have now the right to ask of her, 
having saved England, that as an evidence of her good faith in saying 
that she is a friend of liberty, that she withdraw her flag from this con- 
tinent and leave it to be entirely dedicated to liberty and freedom. 

This action should apply not alone to Canada, but to the British West 
Indies and to all other territory in both continents that England holds in the 
Western Hemisphere. Her holding of lands here is a menace. If there is 
any truth in the statements of her apologists that she holds these lands 
only at a loss and because of her unselfish interest in their inhabitants, let 
her withdraw. We can guarantee their independence under the Monroe 
Doctrine, and if she holds them only for use as a base in war, it must only 
be as against us and we should now insist that she give them up. Such 
withdrawal would be a practical renunciation on her part of any policy of 
hostility or unfriendliness to America. 

Man Is Sighing for Peace 

The late war aroused mankind to a realization of the fact that without 
regard to the boundaries of a country or the lines of race, war is a curse 
to mankind; that it takes not only millions of a generation to death and 
leaves other millions subject to sickness and disease as an aftermath, but 
it imposes on the future generations a back-breaking burden of taxation 
which means countless hardships and privations, while it brings only to 
the specially privileged peoples in every country immense fortunes which 
break down the foundations of liberty and sap the principles on which 
freedom exists. 

Without regard to race or religion, man is sighing for peace. He 
realizes that war is an abnormal condition, that peace is the normal con- 
dition, and men are seeking as they have never sought before, to insure 
a peace that will prevent and destroy war. 

Hopes Based on the Peace Conference Vanish Like a Dream 

Mankind lived in the hope that the Peace Conference was to be 
a setting for the ending of all wars. Peoples were to be taken from the 

17 



thralldrom of their aggressors, natural boundaries were to be established 
between states, armaments were to be destroyed, cannon were to be made 
into plowshares, and the fourteen points of President Wilson were to be 
made the, basis of an enduring peace. 

The Peace Conference has practically adjourned and all the hopes 
that were based upon it are passing into oblivion like the illusions of 
dreams. But the mass of mankind is more than ever insistent that there 
must be an end to human destruction and to the awful butchery and 
suflfering that modern war spells for humanity. It has been driven into 
their minds that only by freedom to the oppressed of all nations can peace 
come, putting an end to the rule of the few and by bringing about govern- 
ment by the many, bringing at once liberty to man and an end to all 
war. 

There may be for a short time a brief respite for those who remain 
in power, though they have deceived the people who have seen promises 
solemnly made, lightly broken. But no just or permanent peace can be 
made until the purposes to which the American people set their hands 
when they entered the war have been attained, until autocracy in all its 
forms has been destroyed, until not alone the militarism that was 
breaking the back of Europe but the navalisni which is oppressing and 
controlling the whole world shall be destroyed and the right of self- 
determination shall be given, not alone to some, but to all the peoples 
of the earth. 

A Court of Nations 

A court of Nations will come in its own due time that will embrace 
all the people of the earth, that will see to it that all peoples are free, 
and that will see to it that the world war will actually bring a permanent 
peace. Such a Court will exalt justice and will destroy tyranny, but it 
will be a real Court, open to all peoples, and not an unreal League which 
is only another name for an Anglo-American Alliance, a Cecil-Smuts plan 
to exalt autocracy and enslave mankind. 

Every red-blooded man favors such a Court of Nations as he favors 
the brotherhood of man and the counsel of perfection, but the more 
intensely he favors such an ideal the more he objects to and abhors the 
hypocrisy which would steal the ideal in order to cover a treaty of alliance 
that would fasten the robber grip of England on all the world. 



The Guarantees of Ireland 

Having set forth the claims of Ireland to independence, her demand 
and her right to be free; having exposed the hypocrisy of England in her 
varied attempts to confuse the issue, having torn away the mask behind 
which England hoped to securely hide from the gaze of the world, let us 
see what Ireland offers to the world as an evidence of her good faith. 

The people of Ireland seek for themselves a form of government which 
would do justice to all the people within the four shores of Ireland. They 
seek to set up a government representing equality to all, injustice to none. 
They demand and will insist upon political equality and religious freedom 
for all the people of Ireland. 

They insist that the majority must rule, but that the rights of political 
equality and religious freedom shall be given to all members of the 
minority as well as of the majority. 

The people of Ireland believe that the minority is entitled to guarantees, 
but not to control. They are ready to embody a guarantee of these rights 
in their constitution, as they have been embodied in the Constitution of 
the United States. 

They are ready to adopt these things which made for success in 
America and to avoid those things which were found to be mistakes 
or errors. 

Contrasts Ireland and America 

As a result of the Revolution in America estates were confiscated 
and men were exiled. The people of Ireland, however, are ready to say 
to the small group in Ulster who say they cannot remain as an integral 
part of the Irish people that they would part with them with regret, but 

18 



will guarantee to them, if they choose to sell, the full market value of 
all property which they own in Ireland. 

The people of Ireland ask every man of whatever blood, of whatever 
religion, who is now in Ireland to remain in Ireland on terms which 
will insure absolute equality for all. They point out that there is no 
mstance in its history of religious persecution or racial intolerance due 
to the majority of the people of Ireland; that wherever there has been 
persecution it has been by the minority, urged on against the majority 
by the English government. 

The people of Ireland point out that in every section of the country, 
in every generation, Protestants of different sects or religious persuasions 
have been put forward as leaders by a majority of the Irish people, 
called to the highest elective ofifice within the gift of the majority of the 
people. They urge that no fairer way of judging the future can be 
found than that furnished by the experiences of the past. 

They are willing at all times to accord to others the rights which 
they insist upon for themselves. They demand, without further delay, 
that their present rights shall be recognized by the world and that 
international recognition shall be given to the republican form of gov- 
ernment established in Ireland after a plebiscite held on her shores last 
December, in the presence of the great English army of occupation and 
under conditions which held the machinery of government at that time 
in the hands of Great Britain. 

Why should England, that cried out with such strength against 
injustice in Belgium, be permitted to maintain and continue her rule 
of might in Ireland? Even her apologists admit that England's rule in 
Ireland is based only upon her bayonets and cannon. 

How can England satisfy the conscience of the world with her 
explanation that what is wrong in Belgium and in Alsace is right in 
Ireland? She says that the people of Ireland should not cry out for 
liberty because, forsooth, they are today enjoying a larger measure of 
prosperity than they formerly had. Why should they not have it? Is 
it not the result only of their own thrift, their own industry, their own 
labors? 

The apologists of England say that Ireland did an immense business 
with that country last year — that this is a sufficient answer to Ireland's 
cry that she is badly governed! How typical was Clive of the English 
government of all times when he said, after he had been accused of 
robbing India of immense treasure, that when he saw the wealth of the 
country he was astonished at his own moderation! England's statesmen 
feel that it is right to steal Irish sheep so long as they return a chop to 
the Irish owner. 

The proposition is an insult to the intelligence and conscience of the 
world and in spite of the marvelous system of propaganda which the 
English diplomat has built up, he cannot prevent the cry of Ireland for 
freedom from resounding in all parts of the world and coming back to 
plague him until it is satisfied by having justice done to Ireland. 

The English governing class are the Bourbons of modern days. They 
learn nothing, forget nothing. Let them beware lest the aroused public 
opinion of mankind shall sweep them as it swept their German and 
Russian cousins into oblivion and break into bits the British Empire, 
which is the last bulwark of autocracy against the on-rushing tide of 
liberty and democracy. 



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